Between Church and State:
The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Late Middle Ages

Bernard Guenée

An attempt to combine biography and history, Between Church and
State contains four lives of medieval French prelates. The first
two are short, just over thirty pages each. The Dominican Bernard Gui
(1261-1331) was prior, inquisitor, and bishop in southern France. An able
administrator and a historian of note, he bears little resemblance here
to the bloodthirsty inquisitor portrayed by Umberto Eco in The Name
of the Rose. Gilles Le Muisit (1272-1353) was abbot of Saint-Martin.
After going blind in 1346 he devoted himself to dictating poetry and
prose in French and Latin.

The other two prelates had more important political roles and Guenée
devotes considerably more space to them. His life of Pierre d'Ailly
(1351-1420) is almost a mini-history of the French Church during the
Great Schism. Ambitious and talented, Pierre d'Ailly rose to be head
of the College of Navarre at the University of Paris, chancellor of
Paris, chaplain to Charles VI, and then bishop of the important diocese
of Cambrai. A renowned orator, he played a leading role in the
political and theological debates of the period, over issues such as an
unpopular chancellor, the immaculate conception, and the withdrawal of
obedience from the Pope. Pierre d'Ailly's career culminated in
leadership of the French "nation" at the council of Constance.

Along with his native Normandy, Thomas Basin (1412-1490) endured
a troubled mid-fifteenth century. Appointed bishop of Lisieux, he
swore loyalty to Henry VI of England in 1448; in 1449 he negotiated the
bloodless surrender of his episcopal seat to Charles VII, retaining his
position. He played an important role in the debates over the Norman
Charter and the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction. Having taken
the wrong side in the War of the Public Weal, in 1466 Thomas Basin
had to flee in order to avoid the wrath of Louis XI. He resigned his
bishopric in 1474 and spent his old age as a refugee, moving from one
town to another in search of security. His writings included lives of
Charles VII and Louis XI.

Guenée does not indulge in dramatisation or psychological speculation.
Neither can he provide much in the way of biographical minutiae: his
primary sources are his subjects' own writings and those of their peers
and his lives are, as a result, stronger by far in intellectual than in
personal detail. Guenée does, however, make connections with broader
themes in the history of ideas — such as the position of ambition
among the other sins, the distinction between different kinds of
fears, or the justification of capitulation to superior force.

I expected it to be dry and scholarly, but Between Church and State
turned out to be rather easy to read. It is definitely more appealing
as history than as biography, but it should be enjoyed by anyone with
an interest in the period, not just by specialists in the medieval
French Church.

%T Between Church and State
%S The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Late Middle Ages
%A Guenée, Bernard
%M French
%F Goldhammer, Arthur
%I The University of Chicago Press
%D 1991 [1987]
%O hardcover, bibliography, index
%G ISBN 0226310329
%P 447pp